


Looked in Your Eyes and Now I'm Falling Slowly

by aestheticly_cat



Series: And I Love the Way You Say You're Scared to Hold Me [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Introspection, M/M, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, Nile Freeman-centric, Pre-Relationship, learning to live when you die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27855362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aestheticly_cat/pseuds/aestheticly_cat
Summary: Nile Freeman dies, joins an ancient squadron of immortal warriors, dies again, lives, and tumbles head over combat boots into love with a fallen goddess who has funeral pyres for eyes, but maybe not in that order.Alternatively: Andy was waiting to die, and Nile—well. Nile was just waiting on her.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: And I Love the Way You Say You're Scared to Hold Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039214
Comments: 7
Kudos: 58





	Looked in Your Eyes and Now I'm Falling Slowly

Nile doesn’t register the agony that must come from getting one’s throat slashed open on the serrated edge of a knife. Every single cell in her body is focused on drawing her next breath, which is proving impossible because—neck, knife, slashed. Her chest and lungs burn hotter than any fire she’s ever felt, and she flaps her hand in desperation. Dizzy catches it, clasps it tight in her own gloved one, and begs her to keep her eyes open over and over and over. Nile heaves as her own blood pools in her mouth, in the far back of her throat, and tries to keep her eyes on Dizzy’s face as the world greys out around her. God, she tries.

Her last thought is of her mother, her ageing face bursting into joy, and the way she leaves the apartment windows open on the first day of spring to welcome the way the Earth changes.

In a train that’s racing across a different desert, Andromache the Scythian gasps awake, hand at her throat, and prays for the first time since Quynh had been dragged from her sight.

‘ _Please, God. Not again_.’

\------------------

Nile Freeman learns two things very quickly in the first few days of her second life.

The first: She really hates getting shot, but falling out of a high-rise is so much worse.

The second: Andy is the most infuriating and stubborn being that has ever set foot on planet Earth.

[In the quiet lull of the car on the way to one of the team’s various safe houses after Merrick, after Booker, Nile quietly acknowledges a third thing she has learned: One day, in the rapidly approaching future, Andromache the Scythian is going to break her heart.]

Nile is still reeling from the idea that she won’t see Booker for one hundred years, a century, _a lifetime_ , when the car pulls up in front of a slightly rusted iron gate. Distantly, she notes the vines of Wisteria crawling up the bars and wonders if one of the other three silent immortals planted it there in some past life, in a time of rest and peace.

Nicky uncurls his lithe frame from the passenger seat with a sigh so weary Nile’s eyes burn. The way Joe stretches a hand over the back of the seat to brush his fingertips across the nape of Nicky’s neck, an answer to his exhaustion, a declaration of togetherness that she doesn’t think she’ll ever truly understand, has her blinking hard. If she starts crying she’s afraid she’ll never stop.

She turns her eyes to Andy instead, and finds two orbs that shine like sea glass already gazing back at her. Four days ago, Nile would have straightened her spine, rolled her shoulders back, and lifted her chin like any soldier would if they were standing in front of their commanding officer. But four days ago Nile hadn’t bled out into the sand. She hadn’t been riddled with bullets, and she hadn’t flung herself off a building in defense of a woman she barely knows. This Nile, newborn and frightened in the way only children can be, lets her fear and desperation break through the fragile mask she had constructed somewhere between London and wherever here is. Andy just stares back at her through the review window, and Nile notes that she feels less like a bug under a microscope and more like a piece of modern and complex art.

Andy makes the executive decision that they all need to rest before deciding what to do next. Nile doesn’t bother pretending that it’s not for her benefit.

That night, curled up in a tiny cottage in Malta, Nile clutches the cross around her neck until it bites into her flesh. She falls asleep before the cut heals, and dreams of an ancient warrior with a sweet tooth.

Andy lies awake reacquainting her body with pain that lingers and aches. If she keeps herself firmly planted between Nile’s sleeping form and the door—well, that’s no one’s business but hers.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first very short part in what will be a series of Andy and Nile and their developing relationship. I'm still trying to find the right "voice" for writing these, but I am already working on two more installations. I am open to any and all criticism. Thank you for much for reading!


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